Steve Bynghall is a freelance consultant, researcher and writer, specialising in knowledge management, intranet, social business and collaboration solutions. He has authored or co-authored books and reports on many topics including intranets, enterprise mobility, SharePoint and crowdsourcing.

Following an MSc in Information Science from City University, Steve worked at accounting firm BDO LLP for over 13 years, working in various knowledge roles. In late 2010 he set up Two Hives Ltd. Steve works extensively for the Digital Workplace Group and Step Two Designs. He blogs at www.twohives.co.uk/ and can be followed on Twitter at @bynghall.

Information services teams who create a Centre of Excellence need to consider how they represent themselves to their users and stakeholders throughout their organisation. This article explores a few ideas and suggestions to help you do this, including building an effective online presence and how you can do this.

Information professionals have a unique set of skills that organisations really need but tend to overlook and underuse. Even when there are priority projects where information management is important, sometimes external consultants are the first point of call. You know you make a strategic contribution to your organisation and so does your boss but do your senior stakeholders and users know? This article looks at some ways you can highlight the strategic contribution you make and start to break down some of the outdated stereotypes and perceptions.

Information services, knowledge management and digital workplace roles often require multi-disciplinary skills. This article looks at how a competency and skills framework can help individuals and teams consider their own career and development needs, while also articulating conversations with others about what they do.

Many organisations are using Office 365. Getting to know Office 365 and its constituent tools can help information and knowledge teams deliver services, as well as provide opportunities to provide expert guidance to help organisations get the most out of Office 365, including Outlook, SharePoint, MS Office, Teams and Skype for Business.

Intranets are a traditional part of the workplace technology landscape but have evolved considerably. This article explores some of the ways intranets have changed and continue to do so, including its move to the cloud, better integrations, and the adoption of artificial intelligence and bots.

How best to disseminate information within an organisation is a topic that continually preoccupies information professionals and this article looks at the some of the different variables and approaches that need to be considered to help work out the best channels for effective evaluation of messaging channels.

There is a growing interest in digital literacy in the workplace to help drive digital transformation. In this article Steve Bynghall looks at what this entails and what opportunities this provides for information professionals to add value and how they should contribute to initiatives and efforts around this subject.

Usage and adoption metrics are often used by information services and knowledge professionals to measure the success of their service or platforms. However, such metrics may have questionable value when benchmarked against other organisations because the numbers are often not directly comparable and have little meaning outside the context of the organisation they are from. Qualitative comparisons tend to have more value. In this article Steve Bynghall looks at how to get the most value from metrics and improve your information service.

Following on from our article last year on the potential value of chatbots in the workplace and specifically for the information profession, this article examines their evolution and highlights some of the latest trends to emerge, including the productisation driven by messaging platforms, the growth of voice assistants and chatbots in information services.

My Favourite Tipples are shared by Steve Bynghall, a consultant specialising in intranets, KM and collaboration. He details his go-to resources for keeping up with research and trends in the digital workplace and the internet, as well as sharing resources he uses on-the-go to organise his work.

Change management skills are needed to run an effective information service and support users in performing tasks that were previously the information centre's domain. This article covers some of these skills from communication and training through to stakeholder and community management and offers some useful practical tips to ensure change management skills are part of your new skill set.

Chatbots are currently receiving a lot of media attention, but what are they and what kind of opportunities do they present for information professionals? Steve Bynghall looks at the chatbot phenomena - what they are, why there's so much hype, how close they are to being deployed in the workplace and how technologies such as natural language programming, algorithms and artificial intelligence may impact information and knowledge professionals.

This article highlights some of the takeaways from the recent Research Focus "Content and technology for current awareness", covering the product landscape, the responsiveness of vendors to customer needs, insights into managing a current awareness service and the future with innovations such as artificial intelligence. It links to many of the articles and reports included in the Research Focus.

This article examines whether current awareness involving more general and business news delivers value. It features an interview with Andrew Woolfson, director of knowledge and capability, at RPC, a UK top 50 law firm. Woolfson is sceptical about the value of current awareness believing that information professionals should focus instead on providing deeper insights and analysis. Some next steps around assessing the value of your current awareness set-up are suggested.

Some leading intranets are currently putting more emphasis on search, with content which is tagged with relevant topics, and can also be matched to user profiles to deliver a personalised experience. Subscribing to news feeds from different collaboration communities and groups is also an option. This article looks at some of the opportunities in this area and features a case study from DNV GL written by Jerome Colombe.

This article considers some of the advantages and disadvantages of the various formats for delivering current awareness. These include documents, email, news feeds and activity streams, social bookmarks and pinboards, and mobile access. Steve Bynghall examines whether one size can really fit all requirements.

Slack is a collaboration tool which has achieved extraordinary growth, largely bypassing central enterprise collaboration teams. What does this mean for the ways we should support users from the centre? Steve Bynghall argues that Slack has strengths and weaknesses and central support is needed to help employees explore different collaboration options. A number of support tactics are outlined.

The Research Focus "Strategic Alignment of Information Services and IT" features a number of case studies, research-driven articles and personal accounts of working with IT. Steve Bynghall, co-producer of the Focus, highlights some of the recent articles as the Focus comes to a close.

Having a better appreciation of the wider strategic agenda for IT functions can lead to better communication and fewer misunderstandings. Steve Bynghall examines several areas where IT must deliver, including maintaining security and ensuring compliance, and how they deliver on organisational strategy, particularly around digital transformation, and increasingly input into strategy.

Many of us have experienced the occasional challenge when working with IT. However, this article argues that although there will inevitably be issues when you work together on projects, over the years working with IT has evolved for the better. From personal experience of working with different IT professionals over 20 years, working with IT has become easier and more productive.

How do digital workplace luminaries see the concept developing, how will it impact on departmental relationships with IT, and who should be leading the digital workplace? As part of Jinfo's current Research Focus, "Strategic Alignment of IS and IT", Steve Bynghall interviewed two experts who work globally: digital strategy adviser Jane McConnell and intranet strategy and design expert James Robertson.